The damning words of ‘Just get over it’ or ‘move on’ ring in my ears at time.  It hurts.  I tried over and over an over to ‘just get over it.’ Everything I tried was like kicking the walls of an old dry well, more dirt and crap fell on top of me. I sat at the bottom for a long time.  In abject misery with no idea what was wrong with me or how to get out.   In desperation, after seeing multiple medical doctors, I finally sought marriage counseling.  I still wasn’t admitting that I was the one in the well.  My first counselor gave us assignments and nothing was going right.  The results he was expecting weren’t happening.  I felt like a failure in counseling too.  Who fails counseling?  My counselor, however, understood the process that until I recognized that I had a problem, I couldn’t fix it.  Until I chose healing, it wouldn’t happen.  Tough few months.  The game changer was when he asked me about my childhood.  I cheerfully told him it was great, the answer I gave to everybody, especially myself.  He called me on it and asked me to tell him an average day.  He knew when he asked me that I didn’t have a clue.  I finally confessed that I didn’t know anything about my childhood other than what I was told.  I didn’t have my own memories of anything before high school.  My mind hid my past from myself.  I had to first recognize that maybe there was something to consider about healing me.  Then I needed to choose the path to healing.  My counselor kept reminding me that he was the coach, I had to run the course, do the work, grab the rope to get out of the well.  Whatever the metaphor, I needed to chose to heal.  I made the choice, much like a little kid choosing to be a doctor.  There is a bunch of hard work between the time to decide to change and progress appears.  The process is not to get me back to anywhere.  I will never be what I was before trauma occurred.  It doesn’t make sense to think I should be.  The healing path brings me to a new place of strength, understanding, and healthy choices.  I’m thankful I made the choice to take the hard road.  Or grasped the rope to get me out of the well.